Many weight lifting exercise machines have been developed and patented over the years. The goal of most of these machines is to provide safe and convenient exercise during which weights, which are either remotely located and operated by cables and pulleys or mounted locally as on a weight bar, are lifting against the force of gravity. These machines, with few exceptions comprise a captive weight, or a weight that is supported in the machine in a manner that the user need exert a force only in a generally upward direction to perform the required exercise. Balance and coordination of effort by various muscles involved in the lifting process are not necessarily used when using such apparatus. Many weightlifters and bodybuilders are returning to what is called "free-bar" exercises after having used such other equipment. "Free-bar" exercises are those wherein the control and balancing of the weight is the total responsibility of the user. They have found that the exercise machines available to them are suitable for exercising the large muscles of the body, but, because they do not require the user to control the weight in terms of balancing it, these machines fail to provide proper exercise for the finer muscles that are so important in balancing. One can readily imagine an athlete who has been trained exclusively on weight training machines having captive weights and who is therefore fully capable of lifting a weight, but is incapable of controlling the weight once it is lifted.
The weight lifting exercise known as the bench press requires a weightlifter to lie in a substantially supine position on a bench under a weight bar that carries a preselected amount of weight evenly distributed on the ends of the bar.
It should be understood that in most cases the bench is horizontal, although in some cases the bench or a part thereof may be inclined, usually with the user's head higher than his torso; in either case, I consider the user's position to be supine, by which reference I embrace the horizontal and the inclined orientations. The weight bar is then lifted off the rack (attached to the bench at nearly the full extension of the user's arms) and brought down to the user's chest. The exercise then comprises lifting the weight from the chest to the full extension of the arms and returning it to the chest, and then repeating this procedure for an appropriate number of times.
At the completion of a period of exercising, the user must again lift the weight bar to the full extension of his arms to return the weight bar to the rack. Obviously, when the user is fatigued, as is often the case when the user has forced himself to perform more repetitions than he felt was his capacity, which technique is commonly called "overloading," the return of the weight bar to the rack is difficult or even dangerous.
Although weightlifters and bodybuilders know that safety should be of primary concern and that a second person should be ready to help or to remove the weight bar when such help is needed, the pressures of time and the availability of equipment for exercising lead them to ignore this important safeguard. Even when the safeguard is observed, injury can occur if the second person, the "spotter," takes inappropriate or unexpected action in his efforts to provide help to the exerciser.
Recent developments in the art of bodybuilding teach that greater effectiveness is obtained by exercising in the so-called "eccentric contraction" mode. To adherents of the eccentric contraction method, lifting the weight bar against the pull of gravity is considered less effective in building or developing muscle tissue than is slowly lowering the weight from the initial full extension to the contracted position wherein, for the bench press, the weight bar is near the chest.
The adherents of the eccentric contraction mode would prefer to have aid from a source other than the muscle group being exercised to lift the weight; they then exercise the desired muscle group primarily during the slow lowering of the weight bar. When a spotter is used to accomplish this mode of exercise, the transfer of the weight bar from the user to the spotter and back again while it is always positioned above the user's reclining body, carries obvious hazards with respect to timing and coordination of the efforts of the two people to prevent the heavily-weighted bar from being dropped, causing serious injury to the user.
From the standpoint of time utilization, it would be desirable to have equipment that would make the bench press exercises described herein suitable to be performed by a solitary user without a spotter, even for the adherents of eccentric contraction or users of forced repetitions, while at the same time improving the safety of the exercise.
A significant contribution to the safety of the user of a free-bar bench press exercise was taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,256,301, issued to R. G. Goyette. Goyette teaches the use of a weighted bar suspended from an overhead tower by means of a cable passing through a pulley, thence to foot member, bar, or element slidably mounted on a secondary frame assembly mounted on the foot end of the bench. Movement of the foot element towards the foot end of the bench will cause the cable to elevate the weighted bar. One should note that there lacks in Goyette a desirable one-to-one ratio between the motion of the foot element and the motion of the weighted bar. In addition, the presence of the secondary frame assembly and foot element severely restricts the movement of the exerciser in mounting, dismounting, and especially in opting to make use of the foot member after a period of exercising without engaging the foot element.
Presumably, the exerciser would be in a supine position with legs extended beneath the foot element (and not on the floor) during exercise not employing the foot element. Should the exerciser encounter difficulty in raising the weight from his chest, the foot element would be in a position on the secondary frame assembly nearest the head end of the bench, in which position the foot element presents itself as a barrier to the exerciser's raising of his legs to engage the foot element with his feet. Although an alternative exercise position would have the exerciser straddle that portion of the bench occupied by the secondary frame, that position would be exceptionally inconvenient.
Thus, although Goyette allows the exerciser to safely bench press a weight at or near the limit of his strength, he does not provide for forced repetitions in a standard, foot-planted exercise position with easy transition to a foot-aided lift when the exerciser is exhausted; neither does Goyette provide an adjustable safety stop, much less a self-positioning safety stop. The apparatus taught by Goyette is thus not seen as permitting the execution of the standard bench press.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,838 to McIntosh discloses safety stands for use in protecting persons from injury by the droppage of barbells during bench pressing. The McIntosh patent does not disclose that the width of the stands should be sufficient to prevent injury to at least the face, neck, and chest cavity of the lifter. Moreover, the individual stands are not rigidly attached to a frame as in the present invention which decreases their stability. With the safety stands of that patent where the lifter has a loss of control, it would be possible to have the barbell far enough out of position with respect to the upturned ends to tip the stands, thereby causing injury.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,471,956, issued to S. M. Marlo, teaches the use of a cable-tethered weight bar wherein the cable leads to a safety weight that, when released by a trip lever operated by the user's foot, counterbalances part of the weight of the weight bar to help the user lift the bar to return it to the rack. Thus, after several forced repetitions to the point of severe fatigue, the user merely trips the foot-operated trip lever for help to return the bar to the rack. An added feature to protect the user if the bar is accidentally dropped, is that a protuberance on the cable engages a pulley and stops excessive downward movement of the weight bar.
Although the Marlo patent has merit, there are some obvious shortcomings. The trip lever must be re-strung with the safety cable after each use. The main cable is slack during the exercise and can easily jam in the pulleys to the extent that the counterweight feature is completely disabled.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,252,314 issued to L. Ceppo, teaches a device for performing weight lifting exercises that includes connecting a slidably guided weight bar by means of overhead cables to stirrups engaged by the means of overhead cables to stirrups engaged by the feet before bench press exercises involving forced repetitions are begun. The user may therefore use his legs to assist the lifting of the weight bar during forced repetitions. Since the rest position of the weight bar is not on an elevated rack, but rather on stops that provide clearance above the user's chest, and since the stirrups are in a position to require a pulling force to be exerted downward by the feet in a manner wherein I observe that leverage is minimal, the reason for providing the cable and stirrups as an aid to bench pressing is unclear. Ceppo's apparatus would be inappropriate for use by a weightlifter in training as the proper standard bench press position and the good base for proper balance commensurate with the standard position is not enabled by the apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,561,651, issued to R. W. Hole, teaches a free-bar simulating bench press apparatus wherein the weight bar is tethered by cables to tension-maintaining weights that serve as safety stops that engage adjustably-positioned barriers to prevent the weight bar from falling upon the user. This patent, although it provides safety to the user of the apparatus, does not include any provision to help the user of the apparatus to return the weight bar to the rack after forced repetitions, nor does it offer the advantages to be had by using the eccentric contraction technique with an assisted lifting and unassisted lowering of the weight bar.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,605,222 issued to G. L. Shannon describes a weightlifting bar that may be considered a special purpose dumbbell designed for lifting relatively light loads with one or two hands. The bar described in the Shannon patent includes a straight short center section, a pair of short handles that extend radially at right angles from each end of the center section, and a pair of side sections extending at an acute angle with respect to the center section from the extended ends of each of the handles. The center of gravity of this weight-loaded bar is centered between the handles both laterally and longitudinally; that is, at about the middle of where the user ordinarily grasps the bar. Because of its configuration and the relative position of the center of gravity, this prior bar, when loaded with weights, can be used to perform a variety of exercises without undesirable torque loading on the user's wrists. If the center of gravity of the loaded bar is not centrally disposed between the handles at all times, greater or lesser torque would be experienced by the user as the movement of the user's wrists rotates the weight center outward and upward.
It was to overcome the shortcomings and disadvantages of these prior art arrangements that the present invention was made.